April Fools! That dip in new-car fuel economy during the fourth month of this year was in fact an aberration. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) calculated the weighted average of new-car fuel economy and determined that new car month-over-month fuel economy in May rose for the fourth time in five months. Better yet, May represented a monthly record high.

May's new cars got an average fuel-economy rating of 25.6 miles per gallon, up from 25.2 mpg in April and rising 3.2 percent from the 24.8 mpg figure a year earlier. The real impressive news is that the five-year fuel economy average rose 20 percent, so both Americans and the automakers appear to be doing their part in reducing fuel use by buying and making more alt-fuel vehicles and four-bangers.

This year, Americans appear to be scaling back on the fuel-use a bit as gas prices do their usual upward march heading into summer. Last month, US sales of hybrids, plug-ins and diesels were up 14 percent from a year earlier, as Toyota Prius sales rose 14 percent and the Nissan Leaf battery-electric set an all-time monthly record for sales, exceeding the 3,000-vehicle monthly threshold for the first time ever. Meantime, check out UMTRI's numbers here.

We get it. Ads can be annoying. But ads are also how we keep the garage doors open and the lights on here at Autoblog - and keep our stories free for you and for everyone. And free is good, right? If you'd be so kind as to whitelist our site, we promise to keep bringing you great content. Thanks for that. And thanks for reading Autoblog.

Here's how to disable adblocking on our site.

Click on the icon for your Adblocker in your browser. A drop down menu will appear.

Select the option to run ads for autoblog.com, by clicking either "turn off for this site", "don't run on pages on this domain", "whitelist this site" or similar. The exact text will differ depending on the actual application you have running.